Make sense, Kuznetzov's primary value left now is pilot training and tech testing. It doesn't need upgrades for that.
It's a surface version of Dmitry Donskoi SSBN at this point.
Funnel that money into building frigates and landing ships. Better yet more Yasens. Every little bit helps.
Not strictly true.
Its purpose is to provide an air contingent anywhere where the Russian navy operates.
They need to ditch that money-wasting hole of a ship.
Which other Russian vessel offers air support to the Russian navy?
Time to let it ride the sunset and take out the trash.
Of course they should listen to your advice... you are their biggest supporter...
If they do end up only repairing her boilers and propulsion then that will be a bit of a shame as I'd very much like to see her with a deep upgrade, but its probably sufficient to focus on improving reliability and enhancing her airwing, and to focus on new ships and subs, so lets see what call they make.
The K will likely have quite a few more upgrades over her operational life, right now it does not make too much sense to spend too much on her.
Once they have expanded their fleet and start more open ocean expeditions around the place a carrier will become rather more important.
The K is far from just "not perfect", it's a disaster. If they can't fix its propulsion issues, they need to ditch it fast.
Spoken like a 12 year old.... if it is not a US 100K ton super carrier then I don't want it... tantrum tantrum tantrum.
snapping arrestor cables
Arrester cables are attached to a gearing system that allows a large heavy object to land rapidly by allowing some give... not too much or the plane will roll off the end of the runway into the water, but also not too little or the arrester wires will break.
The problem was not the wires but the settings of the gears.
On a steam cat you have to set it pretty accurately for the aircraft and its weight load in fuel and weapons or any other payload it might have (ie cargo planes).
If you set it wrong the nose undercarriage might get ripped off the aircraft, or the aircraft might not get enough push to get airborne and end up in the water.
This means that US aircraft carriers have twice the problem that the K has because even today mistakes can be made and problems can occur on both take offs and landings.
One of the main benefits of the EM cats is that it can detect the acceleration of the aircraft as it is accelerating and increase or decrease to prevent either negative result from happening.
spending year after year sitting idle and doing nothing. Continuously being overhauled with no result. The list is endless. T
This list is not endless, and you are clearly no naval expert regarding carriers.
Anyone who knows anything about carriers knows that you need a minimum of three in service to guarantee availability at any one time.
Like submarines, carriers go through three phases.... operational, training, and overhaul and upgrade.
If you have three carriers then you schedule each carrier to be in one of those phases at any one time so that at a pinch you will have one or two carriers available to deal with problems, while one is in dry dock getting upgrades or repairs.
Start from scratch make a proper carrier, with cats.
And there you go showing your ignorance... WTF is a proper carrier?
Exactly which aircraft do they have that actually needs cats to operate?
Cats will cost a small fortune to develop and probably a decade to perfect and the aircraft they have operational on their carriers DONT NEED CATS.
So getting rid of an operational carrier to build what... some big fucking expensive US type white elephant money vacuum with first gen catapults... you fucking genius... congrats...
Kuznetzov does not work because it is neither light carrier nor supercarrier. It was built as a transitional project, basically a test-bed with lots of corners cut as part of design, not necessity.
It was an aircraft carrying ship designed to bring a small contingent of fighter aircraft to whereever the Russian Navy wanted to operate.... and in that sense there is nothing wrong with it.
Obviously NATO fanbois hate it because it is not a trillion dollar American super carrier... what happens if taxpayers find out they don't need 10,000 dollar gold toilet seats to do their job?
Russia inherited 4 Kiev-class light carriers in addition to Kuznetzov. They made a mistake of keeping Kuznetzov and retiring Kievs. They should have done it the other way around.
WTF?
Kievs were armed with Yak-38 VTOL jets and while they get overlooked often they were actually very good at what they were supposed to do. They were not built for naval areal dogfighting and they didn't need to be (naval dogfighting era ended with WW2) but they were good at 2 simple things: dropping bombs and launching anti-ship missiles.
Bullshit. They were good at crashing and saving the pilot because they had an automatic ejection system.
They were slow and short ranged and crashed a lot and could not carry a bomb further or more accurately than a Ka-32, and their ability with anti ship missiles was non-existent. They were shown with AS-7s but its performance against surface targets would be pathetic. Again the Ka-32 would perform better.
They were rough doctrinal analogue of French Super-Etendard. Not perfect but good enough for what they were supposed to do and were getting the job done. Super-Etendards were retired only recently. Russia should have stuck with Kiev/Yak combo. In early 90s they already worked out all the kinks and gotten very good at using them.
NO NO NO... the Super Etendard is actually super compared with the Yaks... if Russia had stuck with the Yaks it would not have been a problem now because they would have all crashed.
The Yak-38M was a dog.
Imagine if in Syria they had 2 or 3 very worked out Kievs available instead of just one Kuznetzov they were barely familiar with?
A ship based fighter so limited in performance would have been no use at all. Land based Su-25s would have better range and payload and accuracy... the Yaks might have been a little faster but not for long.
They don't need carrier aircraft to attack ground targets... they need carrier aircraft to hunt for subs and to protect the ships and subs from enemy attack by missiles or aircraft. The Yak would be useless for that.
Which brings me back to my first sentence: figuring out what they want. Carrier is built around airplanes. And Russia has to design a naval airplane they need and build ship around it.
No.
Even an unupgraded MiG-29 is 100 times better than any in service model YAK VSTOL aircraft... and I am including the Yak-141 here.
It had a big central engine, but its lift engines are dead weight.... it was not as fast as a MiG, it has a smaller radar and a smaller weapons payload, and is all round completely inferior to the MiG.
Inside a VSTOL aircraft there are pipes to carry high pressure air to the wing tips and nose and tail so that the aircraft can manouver in the hover.... that adds weight and complexity and adds vulnerable points where battle damage or even faults can make the aircraft unable to function on a carrier.
The simple conversion of the Kiev to the Gorshkov is what the Russians would have done if they had 4 Kiev class carriers and that would have made them more useful than any one carrier could have been, but VSTOL aircraft are not the solution.
]I think that they need to stick with single engine design that willingly sacrifices redundant dogfighting performance in favor of simplicity, small size and focus on bomb and anti-ship missile payload.
The whole purpose of an aircraft at sea is interception and patrol... if you just want a bomb truck then they have plenty of anti ship and land attack cruise missile options already.
They have SAMs that will hit targets 400km distant and cruise missiles able to hit targets thousands of kms away... why bother with a piece of crap slow and expensive bomber aircraft?
The value of an aircraft is that if you spot a target 500km away you can direct a couple of fighters to take a look before you decide to attack or ignore... those fighters can engage a target or just observe from a distance.
Your single engined VSTOL bomb truck wont be much use there because it will be slow.... a naval variant of the PAK FA will be able to supercruise to the target and inspect it from behind.
The biggest threat to Russian navy ships in open ocean is a few dozen or more tomahawk missiles coming in low... aircraft will spot at near max range and would offer your first layer of defence shooting down many threats and passing target data to surface vessels so they are better able to deal with the rest.
VTOL would be preferable because it would require smaller ships to be built but even with CATOBAR approach small size will still simplify ship design, keep price down and ship numbers up.
Smaller cheaper ships would be less useful and would not be able to operate world wide with the vessels it is supposed to be protecting.
Or do you think the Russian Navy should be based on thousands of motor boats the size of a bus.
Bombs, anti-ship missiles and long range AA missiles on small aircraft. Forget twin engine superdogfigters. They are too big, they complicate ship designs, inflate prices and are completely redundant for carrier Navy.
If you want an aircraft on a Russian carrier it needs to be able to defend itself from anything the carrier comes across.
The Russian Navy has long range precision strike capability with cruise missiles and has no need to risk aircraft or pilots when cruise missiles and anti ship missiles can do the job from ships and subs.
The purpose of the aircraft is to defend the Russian ships from mass air and missile attack and to detect targets at great distances and allow the commander of the naval group to find out more information than just a blip on a screen to make their decision.
Until then they will have to keep Kuznetzov floating around. It's useless in war but it's the only thing they have to practice and test new equipment on.
Useless in war? Are all carriers useless in war too?
If the K had short range low performance single engined bombers, how would that have made it better in say Syria?
1995 is basically the year Russia gave up on their carriers for very suspicious reasons. And I don't need to the hear about the financial argument, as it would cost nothing to keep all these carriers mothballed till finances got better (1 decade or more).
Not suspicious... the Yak were withdrawn from service and the Yak-141 was canceled so these vessels had and have no future.
They worked out that VSTOL aircraft are expensive fragile junk and it is not worth making them.
If they had money then they could have upgraded them to carry MiG-29Ks, but even if they did they had no where to sail to, no foreign ports worth visiting, so they didn't bother.
They basically lost these fine (and some quite new)ships to "accidents" and then abandoned them in a single year. Sounds quite convenient, almost too convenient. Maybe some drunken idiot in order to get re-elected made such choices and sold out his country's carrier force in the process.
The Kievs fine?
No two looked the same because they were constantly changing the design to fix faults and problems... but the biggest problem they couldn't fix.... VSTOL aircraft are junk and a total dead end unless you have an enormous amount of money and want to piss it all away.
A side cat in an otherwise STOBAR carrier is the way to go for Russia. Big, twin-engined ASW/MPA and AEW&C platforms need the juice, as well heavy-loaded fighter-bombers for deep strike, CAP and other long-range patrol missions. All are major requirements for the Russian Navy.
Bullshit.
They don't need heavy bombers or deep strike aircraft.... they already have deep strike cruise missiles.
The only value for a CAT would be AWACS/AEW, but even then other options are probably better.... like tethered airships and HALE UAVs and indeed satellites.
Still I tend to agree, for Russia's current needs, those three Kievs and Yaks would work better for them, than the floating fireplace with snapping cables and ditched aircraft in the water.
Yeah.... NATO fanboy... they should probably sell Siberia to Japan for a billion dollars too right?
The kuz has no practical purpose in the RUN at the moment.
Its aircraft were tested in the ground attack role in Syria, but its primary role is CAP and defense of ships and subs within a naval group.
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